Sermon Notes / Transcript

Scripture: Mark 10:28-34
Speaker: Daniel Coughlin

Sermon: Mark 10:28–31

Scripture Reading

Our scripture for today is Mark chapter 10. We're going to start in verse 28. This is God's word and it is eternally true. Peter began to say to him, behold, we have left everything and followed you.

Jesus said, truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms for my sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now. In the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms along with prosecutions and in the age to come eternal life.

But many who are first will be last and the last first. They were on the road going to Jerusalem and Jesus was walking ahead of them and they were amazed and those who followed were fearful. And again, he took the 12 aside and began to tell them where he, what was going to happen to him. saying, behold, we are going up to Jerusalem and the son of man will be delivered to the chief priest and the scribes and they will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles and they will mock him and spit on him and scourge him and kill him.

And three days later, he will rise again. This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, I pray that the words of my mouth and the thoughts of our hearts would be pleasing in your sight today. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

We ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

We have to remember that when we pick up and stop on a week to week basis, we're taking what Mark wrote as a single narrative and we're cutting it up. We're chopping it up into pieces, right? And so we come here this morning and it's been a week since we thought about what we heard last week.

And I start with, Peter began to say to him. And it's like we just got parachuted in the middle of nowhere and we have no context, right? Nothing before, nothing after. Now, the good news is since we're going through this section by section, if you think, if you can, if you can remember, we talked, you know, last week we read what just was previous to this and the week before what was previous to that.

But after a few weeks, right? Like it's hard to remember. It's hard to remember what came just before this. And so I just want you to know, when Mark was given the job of writing down the gospel here, right?

He thought about all the accounts that he had heard, everything that he had experienced, and he sat down and made it up himself. He was inspired. These are the words of God through Mark. And so, but we have to see, Mark is explaining things. He's teaching us, not just by his words alone in isolation, but how the whole arc of the book of Mark comes.

How one scene unfolds into another scene. I mean, you've watched movies, right? You don't just watch like one scene of a movie and then move on. They all have an interplay, a connection, an ebb and a flow to them.

And so here, what's the context? What did we just read about? Who did we just read about? You guys remember? Okay, so we're at Peter now.

What happened? Let's go back two weeks ago. Anybody remember what we talked about two weeks ago? Yeah, this is the challenge, right? The rich young ruler, does that ring a bell?

The rich young ruler who went to Jesus and said, I've followed all these commandments. What more do I need to do? And Jesus sent him away sad, right? He said, go and sell everything you have and give to the poor.

And then what happened after that? He went away. Okay. And then two weeks later, actually, two weeks later was when the children came, right? And so we've got this, we've got this set up where Jesus welcomes the children and says, you need to receive the kingdom like one of these children.

And then the rich young ruler comes and he's like, he's self-confident until Jesus says, sell everything and leave. And then Peter says, behold, we have left everything to follow you. So who's Peter really responding to? Where did this come from?

Right? Likely, likely, the disciples are walking along the road talking about Jesus's interaction with the rich young ruler, right? Oh man. Yeah. He told him he needed to go sell everything. And oh, look at us. We, we do that.

We have left behind our houses. We left behind our fathers. We left behind our brothers and sisters and we're following you. So there you go.

That, I need, I need some affirmation. Jesus, when you were saying that to that rich young man, that was, that was kind of like me, right? Like I'm that. Am I good enough? I think I'm good enough.

I think we're good enough. Can you kind of see that that's the context that, that is presented to us here in the gospels? Like Mark wants us to see this connection. Like the fact that these paragraphs are all right next to each other.

These are connected thoughts, connected ideas. Behold, we have left everything and followed you. Jesus's response is where we're going to put most of our attention this morning. Jesus responds, teaching them about the realities of the kingdom.

First to tell them what a follower can expect in this life and the next, and then to show the disciples the real cost of discipleship...

I want you to know what he's not saying. He's not saying that you are going to be rich and powerful and happy and healthy and wise in this life. Like if you listen to our prayer requests, our prayer requests are very normal. That is the normal life.

It's full of trials and hardships and sickness. So how do we take what Jesus says here and we reconcile it with our reality? That's our work this morning. That's our work. Because I didn't read the full sentence.

So just to give some context, there's no one who left these things, but that he will receive a hundred times as much in this present age. So in this life, right, not in the resurrection, but in this present life, he will receive a hundred times houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, and children, and farms, along with persecutions.

So if you listen to a gospel, you know, a health and wellness pastor, prosperity gospel pastor, they're going to skip over that persecutions part, right? Because that's, that's, what does that mean? I thought we were getting the good stuff. But then there's also persecutions.

You know what persecutions are? You guys know what persecutions are? Well, what's that? Lots of unpleasantness. And scripture is full of these types of unpleasantness. You know, you, you think back, there's not many prophets in the Old Testament who lived a good life.

Most of the prophets were thrown out of the temple. They were beaten. They were thrown in jail. They were exiled. They roamed around half naked or maybe completely naked at times. It was a tough life.

Being on God's side was usually a tough life. That's persecution. So then what do we make of this hundred times more in brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers? Is it all bad? Because there's the flip side of this too, right?

This is a less popular church if they're focused on the persecutions because most people don't want to hear about that, right? But there is this like self-affirming like, oh, life is just always bad and it's only going to get worse. And we just need to prepare ourselves for how bad things are going to get, right?

There's like this affirming, depressive type teaching as well. We have to avoid that. We have to see both. You have to see that Jesus says, in this life, in this present age, there's a hundred times more of these things if you leave them for the gospel's sake and for Jesus' sake. And it comes with persecution.

I think we overlook the blessing of this hundred times more fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and houses and farms. It's one of those things that's like so obvious, it's right in front of our face and we forget about it. We ignore it.

Because just look around. Just take one second and look around. Look around. I have one biological sister. I have two adopted brothers and one biological sister.

And yet every morning I come to church on Sunday, Sunday mornings, I come to church and I have 30, 40 brothers and sisters gather together on a regular Sunday morning. We gather together in a house, right? I mean, this is God's house. This is the church house. This is available.

This is one of those things. And guess what? When we do our homeschool group, we meet at Northridge. Northridge is generous with their church house and it's well set up to have a whole bunch of kids, do a whole bunch of classes. You have brothers and sisters who don't gather here every Sunday morning, right?

You know other Christian believers? These are your brothers and your sisters who, for the sake of the gospel, have left behind certain things, difficult things, hard things. And they've pursued fathers and mothers. Anyone who's over 40 years old, you're the fathers and the mothers.

You're the fathers and the mothers to these teenagers or these middle-aged people or, you know, guess what? Teenagers, you're the children. You're the children that the church is blessed with. That by leaving the gospel, because guess what?

There are children who've rejected their parents over their parents' love of God. I just had a really hard conversation with someone where their kids did not want them to take their grandchildren to church with them. Because that is a line too far. They do not want to pass that.

There's parents who won't go to church with their children or have spiritual conversations with their children. Or who just have failed to discipline and train up and give a message of hope to their children. To train them up in righteousness. And so what do they need?

They need church fathers. They need church mothers. How about brothers and sisters? What are brothers and sisters good for besides fighting and quarreling?

It's someone you can rely on. I needed, we had the pews up in the balcony. And we needed to get them down. And I, I mean, Chris and Randy and Kenny and Cave and Ian showed up.

And guess what? I couldn't have done that work by myself. I couldn't have gotten those down. No way. It took all, what, six of us? With ropes and boards and, I mean, it worked.

But you know what it took? It took a team. It took brothers. And then you talk about a lady's lunch at the Moral City building. And I'm like, we could call that a sister's lunch, but then that'd sound weird.

So let's not do that. But there's probably ways in which you are relationally closer to your sisters in Christ than you may well be with your biological sisters. But I think if I would have pressed you for an answer for how God gives you this hundredfold brothers and sisters and fathers and mothers and children.

But let's go to farms. How do you, where are these hundredfold farms that, that, that God has given us? Okay. Yeah. No farms in Antarctica. That is true. The desert.

You know what Old Testament says? It says, God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. God.

I don't know if you were around last year. If you were around last summer, we're not quite there yet. We were swimming in apricots last summer. Apricots, however you say it. We were swimming in sweet potatoes. We were swimming in squash. Cabbages, right?

You've heard the joke, like, in the Midwest, you lock your doors in June and July so that no one puts squash in your car.

God provides. What is a farm other than a way to provide? God provides.

And he provides ways through the church, through the ways that we care for one another, through the ways that we provide for one another. And I bring up the, the farm examples, the, the, the, the apricots and the squashes, because it's a tangible, real example of like, you come to church and all of a sudden you have produce.

And it's like, I didn't work for that. I didn't pull the weeds. I didn't. It is just the, it's brothers and sisters caring for one another. It's God providing abundant fruit and abundant harvest.

When we have potlucks, there's an abundance of food. I've never seen it run out. This is the way God provides for one another.

How about houses? I mean, not only do we have the church house here where we gather and we fellowship and we, we eat thousands of millions of houses.

We also have each other's houses, right? That's what Christian hospitality is. Christian hospitality is having a Bible study in Powhatan, having a Bible study in Sabetha, having a Bible study in Seneca.

And it's an open invitation to say, come, come on in. That doesn't happen very often outside the church. Honestly, to be fair, it doesn't happen very often inside the church.

It is, it's a really hard thing to do and to encourage. Because usually what we do is we set a really high bar and, and we make it so that it's really hard.

We think our house has to be spotless and we think our food has to be restaurant quality. Hard inviting someone over to a dirty house and feeding them ramen.

But that's what Christian fellowship is. Sometimes it's just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the floor didn't get swept that morning. And that's okay.

The air conditioner isn't turned up all the way. You know, we all live different.

But for those who have left father and mother and brother and sister and established themselves and said, I want to follow Jesus. I love the gospel more than I love my earthly comforts.

I love the gospel more than I love my blood relatives. I want this. This is hope. This is life. This is the future. This is the only thing I have.

Well, then all of a sudden that makes a church. That makes a church because you know what? We're all standing on the same foundation.

We all love the same thing. We're all, and that doesn't mean you all love green beans or you all love Chinese food or, you know, like we love different things, but we all love the same thing as the most important foundational element for what makes us a church.

That's what joins us together is our love for Jesus, our having been washed clean by his blood. That's it. Everything else is different.

And I pick on Chris a lot for his paragliding thing, paramotor thing, but like I will never do that. We will not go hang out paramotoring.

That's not my thing. I don't shoot guns very much. I'm not very good at it, right? Like there are things that make us who we are that are totally different.

But what unites us is by being washed by Jesus Christ that we can look at our sins honestly and say, yeah, I hurt you. Yeah, I should have called you and I didn't. Yeah, I'm selfish.

I got in a fight with my wife last night. Can you help me out?

And not have to think you're a horrible person. You know you're a horrible person and you know you've been washed clean.

And the only hope you have is in Jesus's righteousness. So that's this age.

That's this age. A hundredfold more with persecutions. And I don't know if I need to explain persecutions. I think you all know that the Christian life comes with persecutions and suffering.

If you're tempted to think I'm talking about a prosperity gospel, health and wellness, come talk to me afterwards. We can talk about persecutions, but we're going to move on.

Verse 30. A hundredfold of houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms.

Actually, I'm not ready to move on from that yet.

Because here's another way we get a hundredfold more.

Have you ever bought a new car? I've never bought a new car. I've always been worried about buying a new car.

Because I think if I bought a new car, I would go crazy over my kids doing anything in the backseat, right?

Like having a sucker, having a, you know, candy wrappers, you know, hail dings, somebody opening their door and popping and denting the side of the car. Like, I think it would just drive me crazy.

But worse than that, you take someone who has it all. Someone who has a hundred houses.

Someone who has all the wealth in the world. And then they get cancer and what happens?

It doesn't matter. They've lost it all. Everything, everything they had, they lose it all.

How tenuous is that life? How fragile is that life?

How difficult is it to enjoy to the fullness what you have when you know all it takes is an accident and it's all gone.

All it takes is a slip and you lose it all.

Bill Gates. I mean, Bill Gates, he, he, before Elon Musk was like the rich, rich man, Bill Gates was the rich, rich man.

And now, now his, his involvement with Epstein, like his reputation has just fallen.

And his, anyway, Jeff Bezos and, and his, you just see the truth of the book of Ecclesiastes.

That these men are just grasping at whatever thing they maybe could hold onto in this life, trying to have some sort of joy and pleasure.

And they're eventually going to get to where Solomon got, where he says, it's just vanity of vanities. Life is a vapor. It's a mist.

The Christian is different. We see our eternal souls and we have this hope, this hope that Jesus talks about here.

And in the age to come, eternal life. That's the source of our hope.

The source of our hope is not just in accumulating things where moth destroys and rust degrades, that, that thieves break in and steal.

That's not our hope. Our hope, the real hope is in the eternal days, the eternal life to come, the coming age.

After death, that, that, that dark veil that we don't see clearly through, but that God's word gives us some hint of what's going to happen.

We have a hope of eternal life, eternal life and glory.

And I was just watching a video and this was, this is a famous chef, which is a funny thing that we have famous chefs these days, but we do.

And he was talking about, about his belief in God and he's got some twisted views of God.

And he goes, I grew up Baptist and, and heaven seems boring. I don't want to go to their heaven because it's just singing.

Well, I've got news for him. Heaven is more than singing.

There is singing involved. So, you know, learn to enjoy singing, but there's more than singing.

There's work, which, you know, might not get you excited either, except it's work. That's just glorious work.

It's good work. It's work that you don't have to fight against the earth for.

Work that's apart from the burdens, the thorns and the thistles, the aching back from lifting the rocks, the, you know, whatever the thing is from the mosquitoes biting your ankles when you're trying to pick blackberries.

It's just joyous work.

Like we, every once in a while you get a glimpse of it in this life, right?

Like you do a project and it goes well and it's like, ah, that was satisfying.

But, you know, usually it's, that was hard and that hurt.

And now I'm hard. Now I'm sore and hurt.

We have an eternal life to look forward to.

And do we understand what that means?

Can we understand what it means to live a thousand years, a million years?

No, we can't. We just, incomprehensible, but it's glorious.

This is our hope.

This is the hope that I hope that Joyce and Julia and Roger and Billy can cling to.

Because I think most of their joy in this life is gone.

There's just not much. There's not much to appreciate. There's not much to comprehend.

It is just difficult.

And I hope, and when I go see them, my goal is to remind them of that hope, of that eternal life, of that, of their eternal soul.

So again, I encourage you to do the same.

Then Jesus warns, this is verse 31, but many who are first will be last and the last first.

Now remember the context. Peter had just said, hey, we're following you.

We did this thing. We're on board. We are church members.

We've signed the covenant. We've been baptized. We sit in the front pew, like pastor says, you know, all these things.

This is, we're in it. We're in it. This is us.

And Jesus says, many who are first will be last and the last first.

And this is, this is a warning.

Kiddos, listen. You can have a great start.

I don't know. Did any of you watch the Kentucky Derby this year?

Is that a thing around here? I don't know.

Okay. Maybe no.

This is going to fall flat if no one watches it.

Okay. All right. Well, you know what the Kentucky Derby is.

It's a horse race, right?

It's a, it's a, it's a round track, an oval track and, and the horses, they start at the same place that they're trying to get across first.

Like it's track, but for horses.

Does that make sense girls? Track, but for horses.

Okay. So there's a starting line.

And, and, and this year there was a thing where all the horses started and they're, they're tromping down the track.

And I don't know how far it is, but it's a, it's a fairly long way.

And they get about halfway along the course around this, around this circle track and there's a horse in dead last.

And right around the halfway mark, this horse wakes up and literally shoots.

If you go at Google search Kentucky Derby at video and you'll see it.

It is amazing to watch.

Last place, last place, last place.

He overtakes everyone and wins.

He just shoots through a crowd and then around the side.

And I listened to the, to the broadcaster.

Let me see if I can find it.

Okay. Here it is.

During the broadcast, the announcer said at the beginning of the front runner of the front runner, right?

Okay. So, you know, cause there's a guy out front and the, in the winners in the very back, but at the front where he says, he has the speed.

Does he have the stamina?

Which the answer was no.

Right?

So it's an incredible, like, it's just a beautiful example of the reality that this is, this happens.

And it's fun because in horse racing, you know, unless if you're a better, maybe it, you know, it, it can actually affect you.

But for me, it's just fun to watch.

But the way this usually is shown is that it's sad because you see a guy who starts off really well, like a young man who's got a lot of potential and he's doing well in school.

Maybe he's, he's a star athlete.

He's a, he's a high academic score.

He's, he sings in the front of the church and then within two years, three years, he falls and he's exposed for being a fraud or he, he drinks too much and he runs his car off the road and he dies.

And this is often where you see these kinds of things, where someone who looks to be first ends up being last.

The same is true on the other side.

Sometimes the last become first.

This, this one's a little more hopeful and more interesting to see.

You see somebody who doesn't look very impressive and then all of a sudden something in their life changes and you start to see goodness, unexpected goodness, unexpected success.

I mean, I think back on my high school childhood friends and I think how many of them that looked really good and really solid and really impressive really turned out to not be any of those things.

And then a couple of the ones who didn't look like much, who made something of themselves, who loved the Lord, who persevered, who stayed by their wife.

That's why this is a warning.

It's a warning.

And again, I guess I think especially for you young folk, you've started well.

You love the Lord, you own a Bible, you read it, you show up at church, you help out.

These are all good things.

But just because you start well doesn't mean you end well.

But guess what?

There's no cutoff line to that.

The Christian life is a life of persevering and moving and continuing.

And you don't get to check out at retirement age.

You don't get to check out when you've had grandchildren.

You don't get to check out until you've fully checked out.

Until death.

Our goal, our mission, our purpose, our striving, our running with endurance and with stamina is, I don't want to say the same because it's not.

Right?

I mean, there's times where you go slower.

There's times when you grow slower.

But the direction, the following Jesus, the learning to shed away the love of this life and the cares of this world, that's the same.

And it goes all the way.

The crowd seemed to have understood that there was some mix of promise and warning.

For there was a mixed reaction.

Read in verse 32.

Jesus was walking on ahead of them and they were amazed.

And those who followed were fearful.

And I looked at this and I thought about it.

I can't really tell which is which, who the different crowds are.

But there was amazement and there was fear.

So he took the disciples aside and he said, Hey, listen, we're going to Jerusalem.

And the son of man will be delivered to the chief priests and the scribes.

And they will mock him and spit on him and scourge him and kill him.

And three days later, he will rise again.

So here's the real rebuke to Peter.

Listen, you've left some things.

You followed me.

That's good.

The son of man.

I came down from heaven.

I left the eternal heavenly father.

I came down.

I put on flesh.

And I'm going to die.

I'm going to be mocked and humiliated and beaten.

Not for my own guilt.

Not because Jesus needed any sort of discipline.

Any sort of sanctification.

Any sort of growth.

It's as if Jesus is saying, listen, you've left some things.

I'm leaving it all.

I'm willing to take on perfection and put on sin in order that you should be washed clean.

That's the foundation.

That's the real cost of discipleship.

The rich young man, the disciples, the followers, none of them came anywhere close to what Jesus was going to pay so that we have the opportunity to be a living sacrifice.

So that we have an opportunity to live by faith, to trust and follow in Jesus.

Jesus knew that his death and resurrection were the only proper foundations to acquire a people for himself.

It is by grace alone that Jesus brings this salvation to us.

It is in Christ alone that our hope is found.

It is by faith alone that the believer receives the redemption that God has accomplished.

We don't trust in our works, in our accomplishments, in our generosity, in our ability to obey the law.

It's going back to being those little children who approach Jesus and want to be blessed by him.

It's receiving the kingdom of God as a child.

Not trusting in our own works, our own righteousness, our own sacrifice, but only trusting in Jesus.

Not on the basis of what we've done.

It was for our sake that he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

That's the exchange.

Jesus, sinless Jesus, takes on our sin and what do we get in exchange?

We get his righteousness.

That's how we appear before God.

That's how we stand before God on judgment day.

Not through anything of ourselves.

Only through his mercy and his kindness.

This is the hope of the gospel.

This is the thing for which we can leave it all behind and trust in his promise of a hundredfold.

This is the foundation upon which faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit, perseveres us to the end.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, help us to learn to trust you. Help us to learn to walk in your ways, to not trust ourselves, to not try and build up for ourselves our own kingdom, but to look to you, to come to you with childlike desires, childlike amazement, childlike faith, to say, Father, we need help.

Only you can provide. be with us bless us and keep us we ask this in Jesus name amen